


nigdy nie moglem myslec o twoich dloniach bez usmiechu

by clockworkmoon



Category: Class (TV 2016)
Genre: Character Study, Getting Together, M/M, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-14 07:02:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20596664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockworkmoon/pseuds/clockworkmoon
Summary: Mateusz doesn’t feel stupid or awkward, though. For the first time in forever, his joke isn’t misunderstood because of his pronunciation, or a literal translation of a Polish saying. Charlie just looks puzzled, and it makes Mateusz laugh. It feels surprisingly easy and good to talk to him.





	nigdy nie moglem myslec o twoich dloniach bez usmiechu

**Author's Note:**

> title is a quote from my favourite Polish poet, Zbigniew Herbert's poem 'Tren Fortynbrasa', and translates to : 'i could never think of your hands without smiling'; here's an English version : https://www.babelmatrix.org/works/pl/Herbert%2C_Zbigniew-1924/Tren_Fortynbrasa/en/5483-Elegy_of_Fortinbras
> 
> This is a very self indulgent study of Mateusz, because as a Polish immigrant in London I literally cried with happiness having a Polish character as one of the main character in such a good show as Class.   
I thought about writing it as something much longer, sort of re-writing the series and continuing; but I think it works nice on its own. Posting it now as I wrote it a year ago and completely forgot to post it or write more. When I rewatch the series, I would love to write more.
> 
> Anyway, enjoy, I hope the still existing fandom consisting of 5 people and my friend's cat will enjoy it.

Mateusz was never bitter about leaving Poland and moving to London. Obviously, he missed his grandma- amazing, warm and so, so accepting, unlike most of her neighbours who were the same age as her, but not even nearly as kind. He missed his friends, as well. But he made his peace with it all, in a very stoic way, which was possibly unusual for a guy his age. He couldn’t help it, really - he understood his parents reasons for leaving, he knew England opened many doors for him, too - universities were on an entirely different level, jobs were better paid, and most of all- he felt as if it would be easier being himself in London. Maybe easier to find a boyfriend. He was lucky enough to be from Warsaw, for as much as lowkey, open homophobia was a constant factor of being brought up Polish, Warsaw’s schools and people were a bit more accepting than, let’s say, smaller towns or countryside.   
When he first hold hands on a bench with the first boy he ever kissed, he never felt unsafe. Watched, judged, ridiculed, untrue - but not unsafe. But there were some amazing spaces, cafes and bars and clubs, where he made friends and managed to grow up into a confident boy, who knew that there wasn’t anything bad with being gay. Even if his parents didn’t believe him, called it a choice, and his mom would cry sometimes, telling him she prays for him to grow out of this rebellion against them and their decision to move to England.

He missed small things, like his favorite kebab place ( English fast food kebab with chips and greasy meat on top was stuff of nightmares), or grabbing coffee at the Old Town, or peacock watching in Park Lazienkowski. The regret was never too strong, because slowly he found his favorite spaces in London, too. He was amazed by Soho, and all antique book shops, and independent cafes in Aldgate that always played great playlists. He almost teared up when he went to a talk at Gay’s the World, regretting there were no places like this in Warsaw that would combine two of his many favorite things- books, and queer history. He kept in touch with some of his Polish friends, and he taught his grandma how to use Skype, to chat with her when his father would spit out his unforgiving words. They still visited his grandma for holidays, and he could walk around Zoliborz and Wola, walking the streets he often wandered around with her when he was a kid.

His nana would tell him about the Warsaw ghetto, and show him the stones that still, after all these decades, marked the ghetto territory, for Polish people to remember. It was these walks, he thinks, that partly made him who he is now. Mateusz would hear about brave people who helped to smuggle Jewish kids outside of the ghetto, but his nana never shied away from mentioning the other side of history, of people who were scared, or plain jealous, who would inform on their Jewish tenants to the authorities, out of fear or greed. It was these walks that made him question the history lessons at school, filled with Polish martyrdom during the constant invasions through the centuries, the stories of Polish people suffering during the World Wars, of their bravery and sacrifice, or of their suffering during Holocaust and selfless help they abode to the Jewish Poles. It was these walks that made him read history books on Polish history to see the other side of it all. Suddenly, it wasn’t all martyrdom and sacrifice, it was mingled with greed, and small-mindedness, and stubbornness that didn't bore any fruits, apart from pointless, higher death counts during useless revolutions that led to nothing but destruction of centuries’ old buildings, and wiping out whole generations. Suddenly, he understood that antisemitism was always a part of Poland, and how ironic it was that at school Jewish Poles were just called Polish, to make their suffering a part of Polish history narrative, and yet on the streets the worst thing you could get called was slurs for Jewish and gay. How people who preached their love for their country, and threw stones during Pride Day, and marched during Independence Day setting bins on fire, who declared themselves patriots, and always spoke about horrors of holocaust for the Polish people, were the same who would blame everything on the old Jewish families. Thanks to his grandma, he learned to be more cautious and patient, and kind. She was the most intelligent and open person he knew. He remembers watching her calmly talk with her neighbours, old ladies who said they believed in God, but in reality they only believed in a priest who spew lies and told them how to vote on the radio and drove a Porsche, and who said Jesus loves all, but they hated immigrants, and gays, and women who fought for their right to decide about their bodies. She would always be patient with them, and had never raised her voice. If she would get exasperated, she would just say my soup is burning, and just go to her flat. Life is too precious to spend it arguing with people who don’t know why they are saying the things they are, she used to say.

Even before he understood he was gay, they would have long talks about being kind and tolerant, about standing up for what is right. She never preached, just smiled, nodded her head listening to him, her lovely, rare old Warsavian dialect the most distinctive memory of his years in Poland. It was her and the walks that allowed him to broaden his horizons, she was the one who pointed him to modern Polish literature and poetry that made him realise that maybe being straight isn’t the default he has to follow, if he could read about these male characters who so strongly felt for other male characters in books, and biographical letters compilations from Polish writers to their lovers. Books that were written before and during World War II, books that made him dig deeper and discover Oscar Wilde, and Proust, both of whom his grandma really loved reading. At school, back in Warsaw, they learned about Greek mythology and read excerpts from Iliad and Odyssey, and then he spent one entire summer going through his grandmas bookshelves and reading more about it, reading all of Homer’s works, reading about Achilles and Patroclus, and vast volumes of Parandowski's translation and essays on Greek and Roman mythology, reading Alexander the Great’s biography and then reading Shakespeare's plays and then sonnets, and realising half of them were written for a man. It was her and the walks that deepened his love for literature, and truth, and kindness.

And as much as Mateusz wasn’t sad about his life being turned upside down and moving to England, this big step was still change. And change may be good, may be bad, but always comes with uncertainty, and he was scared of being an odd one out in his new life. As much as he didn’t have many friends back home with whom he could freely talk about all the books he read in his spare time, mainly because not many other children would read as much as he did, he at least had a spare group of classmates and neighbours that would indulge him. When he moved to London and went to college in UK, he realised it was going to be even harder for him now, to relate to others. It wasn’t just because most people from his English class wouldn’t even read assigned books, not to mention anything for pleasure. He very quickly realised that even if most of his classmates wouldn’t make fun of his accent to his face or in a rude way, they subconsciously just assumed he must be stupider than them because of the way his English didn’t sound similar to theirs. They wouldn’t focus on the words he was saying, but more on the sound- they would often laugh and quickly apologise and tell him the right way to pronounce and correct himself, disrupting the flow of the conversation with patronising, but kind advice. Sometimes, they would fake his foreign accent to reply to his questions, or repeat what he said to someone else, and he knew it wasn’t done in a spiteful way, but each interaction like that made him want to talk to them a bit less. It was frustrating, having all the thoughts, and words that he couldn’t easily say, and sad that he wasn’t heard just because of the way his tongue couldn’t position itself in his mouth to produce the right way to say ‘th’ or make his vowels the right length. 

He felt alien. He felt alien for getting one of the highest marks for his essays from his class, but being unable to conduct a conversation, getting tired of his English speaking friends paying more attention to his pronunciation than what he was trying to convey. He felt alien, asking for directions to the tube station and having a man spit at his feet and then being told to go home, back to Poland. He felt alien not understanding some cultural context, his friends laughing about Jimmy Saville, or The Only Way is Essex. He didn’t allow this to get it to him, and he kept smiling at the jokes he did understand, and he grew to learn how to interact with other people at his school without being able to use his vast, vast vocabulary to talk about things that truly mattered to him.

Mateusz wasn’t bitter about leaving Poland, but he did feel alien, and when against all his attempts at keeping positive attitude all that change started to wear him down, halfway through the semester, Charlie Smith happened. Mateusz noticed him on the first day, coming into the classroom, his beautiful face, elegant posture and amazingly nerdy hairstyle. He reminded Mateusz of Tolkien’s elves, or Achilles. He was shorter than Mateusz, but seemed larger than life. Mateusz remembered looking around his classmates to check their reactions, to see if anyone else was as drawn to this new figure as he was, and apart from April, there was just a sea of blank faces that seemed to barely register anything. Ram rolled his eyes when he heard Charlie’s posh speech and then went back to texting, and Tanya raised her eyebrows at the unusual vocabulary the new boy used.

There was something that tug at Mateusz’s heart when Charlie introduced himself to the class and paused a bit longer when looking at Mateusz, and he thought oh. He remembered half formed thoughts when looking at the boy, in his crease-less outfit, polished to the limits as if ready to be paraded, his prone posture, and hearing queen’s English easily roll out on his tongue, making him even more beautiful. Thoughts that consisted of phrases and sentences he remembered from reading Plato, and Greek mythology, and about two halves of the same soul, and about love at first sight. Mateusz didn’t believe in soul mates, because life was hard work, and so were relationships. It was just, the intensity of that moment, this had never happened before- he found many boys attractive, but it was the first time that he felt as if the breath was knocked out of him. There was something truly exceptional about this new boy. 

Days passed by, and Mateusz noticed April following Charlie everywhere, striking up conversations and then a quick friendship with him that would probably lead to something more, soon. And as much as Mateusz knew his worth, he also thought how can I compete with this nice, smart and kind girl, who speaks fluent English, and can articulate her thoughts without worrying that the words she has in her head won’t sound the same once they are spoken aloud. He didn't dwell on it, but at the same time he did feel he was kind of missing out on something. That could’ve been the fact that he was attracted to Charlie, or maybe just him growing up and reading series like Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, and Chronicles of Narnia, and Little Prince, and Artemis Fowl. As much as his grandma’s small library of classics and history books and talks with her made him kind, they were usually about people who were rich, or from royal families. His childhood books were about normal kids like him, so they made him crave adventure and exceptional life. And Charlie seemed exceptional. 

Two weeks in after Charlie’s transfer, after the class finished, he saw a glimpse of an insanely good doodle the new boy was sketching in a corner of his notebook. Mateusz bit his lip, and before he could overthink it, he stood by Charlie’s desk on his way out of the room.

“This looks amazing. You’re very talented,” he complimented.

Now that he had a closer look, the intricate lines only made him think even higher of Charlie. It seemed like a castle grounds, and it was all in black ink, but he could somehow feel the bursting colour coming out of the drawing. “What is it that you’re drawing? I can see it’s like a castle or something, but is it from movie? Book?”

Mateusz really hoped it would be from a book. Books he could talk about easily. Charlie turned his head up, surprised at either Mateusz talking to him or at the class being over. He smiled and turned his eyes back to the page.

“Oh, Mateusz, hi,” Mateusz couldn't help but feel giddy at how well Charlie pronounced his name.   
“No, not really. It’s my-” Charlie paused, his eyebrows furrowing. “It’s from a dream I had. I dreamed about this beautiful palace, and the grounds around overflowing with pink flora, and high walls, hiding inside a society of learned, good people. It was an incredible place.”

The last sentence is said in a quieter voice, but whatever he was feeling, he shook out of it quickly and turned his smile back at Mateusz. “Do you draw, perhaps?”

Mateusz rubbed his neck, and shook his head. “Never really tried. Never had time. I read a lot.” he explained, and Charlie seemed to perk up at that, surprisingly.

“Is that so? That’s splendid! Back home, I used to read a lot. We had this vast library, with very rare books. After tending to my duties I would go there and immerse myself in the volumes,” he said, and then as if remembering something, he added. “In Sheffield. But I don’t think it’s open anymore, so I wouldn’t try to find it, if you ever come to visit.”

Mateusz laughs. “Too bad, I was already booking tickets to go there, right now! Good thing you said that.”

Charlie gives him a puzzled look. “You act very hastily, we still have classes to attend until later in the afternoon.”

“You don’t understand how much I love books,” he teases him more, but the joke seems to fly over Charlie’s head.   
Mateusz doesn’t feel stupid or awkward, though. For the first time in forever, his joke isn’t misunderstood because of his pronunciation, or a literal translation of a Polish saying. Charlie just looks puzzled, and it makes Mateusz laugh. It feels surprisingly easy and good to talk to him.

Before he notices, they are sitting besides each other, eating lunch. Mateusz gets to tell him a bit about his favourite Polish books, ones he knows Charlie wouldn’t have had a chance to read, even if he does read a lot. Charlie mostly listens, sometimes chips in with a story about the books he’s read, and Mateusz is amazed that he doesn’t know any of them. His heart grows with every story, and he is happy, to be able to speak to someone without feeling like an odd bean, to talk about books, even if it saddens him a bit that he won’t be able to have that every day. Once Charlie and April start dating, if they aren’t already, he will lose it completely, probably.

But the next day, after classes, Charlie approaches him and asks him for help with the homework, and they end up sitting in the library, heads close, Mateusz explaining the assignment and Charlie nodding, and writing things down, and looking up at him with intent when he’s trying to solve the problem on his own.  
Mateusz’s heart grows.

After that, most of the days they end up going to the tube station together after classes, and doing homework in a cafe nearby, with Charlie buying him tea or coffee, and fluffy muffins “for his efforts”. It feels like dates, a bit, but Charlie is still talking to April a lot, and hanging out with her, and smiling at her like she’s the only one in the world. But the thing about it is that he smiles like that at Mateusz, too, so he doesn’t mind that at all, anymore. 

On a rainy Tuesday, after a day filled with tests and a particularly mind-bending physics lesson, Mateusz is slouching on an armchair in a Pret that’s located near their school and decides that college is for overachievers, and maybe it’s time to quit. But then, he feels a hand lightly touching his arm, and when he opens his eyes he gets what should be a very unflattering view up Charlie’s chin, but apparently the boy is unable to look unattractive at any point of his life, from any perspective. Mateusz smiles happily up at his friend and receives a warm cup of tea. He wraps his fingers around it and thinks that he never wants to let go, and that he understands now why his English friends are always laughing how their moms and nanas try to solve everything with a cuppa.

“What’s so amusing?” Charlie asks with a smile, and sits down opposite Mateusz.   
He brings out the books from his bag, and Mateusz will never get over how perfectly straight the other boy’s posture is, at all times. He sits up himself, subconsciously trying to imitate Charlie’s formal position.

“Tea is good for rain,” Mateusz shrugs, small smile playing at his lips, because he’s unable to look at the other boy without an urgent need to smile.   
Then, he looks out of the window, one hand wrapped around the mug and the other supporting his chin. Charlie just hums and nods his head, as if Mateusz’s answer was a perfectly understandable reply to his question, or a fair reason for snickering. He stretches out his legs, a bit, and Mateusz heart skips when their ankles brush and then stay that way, this small point of connection between them, hidden from anyone else’s sight.

Mateusz’s heart grows, but then it feels small, because he never really told Charlie that he’s gay. He doesn’t think he would mind it, Charlie is better than that, but still. He should know that this kind of gesture can be considered as flirting from Mateusz’s perspective, and if that’s something Charlie doesn’t want to do, well. He should know, period.

Mateusz should tell him, but he decides that after his day at school, he’d rather just sit here in silence, for now, with their ankles touching, rain tapping a slow rhythm on the window, and listen to the scratching of Charlie drawing something in his sketchbook, the one Mateusz brought for him so he could keep the drawings he does in one place. He feels content, until he notices that Charlie had been drawing him, out of all the things he could focus on, and the pure emotion at Charlie’s face as he glances up, feeling Mateusz’s attention on him, as his eyes warm up in a smile. Suddenly, it’s all too much, and Mateusz had to blurt out "I’m gay, you know that, right?", and when Charlie just looks at him with wide eyes, he has to look away. Even if he’s not looking at him, Mateusz still can hear Charlie’s phone starts clicking, and what the hell, is he texting someone? Mateusz wasn’t expecting any fireworks after his confession, but any response would be better than silence and tapping on a phone. Then, Charlie stops, and exhales, and Mateusz is very confused. He looks at Charlie again, and now Charlie is staring at him, too, and is anyone ever going to say anything? Mateusz isn’t hurt, but it is a bizarre situation he put himself into. He rubs his forehead, and sighs, a bit resigned. 

“I say, this is weird, you know? You didn’t yell at me like my father did when I told him that, so it’s nicer, but it’s still weird that you don’t say anything,” Mateusz confesses after a minute, not able to stand it any longer, and Charlie frowns.

“Mateusz, please accept my apology. I didn’t know I had to react to this in any way? The way I was brought up…” he thinks about his next words. “No one from my family cared about who one would spend their life with. If a duty called for it, you were expected to produce an heir, but the people I was surrounded with…. There were matters of greater importance than worrying who loves whom. No one had to declare their… preferences, because it didn’t matter.”

His face is earnest, but Mateusz can’t believe this. It sounds like a pipe dream of his younger self. But also, does it mean-

“So, good. It means you don’t care. But, are you-” Mateusz stutters on the words. “Are you pan, then?”

Charlie looks at him for a long moment, then slowly says: “No, Mateusz. I am a human being.”

Mateusz laughs. Charlie’s entire family is apparently so liberated that they don’t need any labels at all? And, some of the labelling words are new. He only learned the term pan when his cousin wrote about it to him. “No, I meant- pan is when, like. You don’t mind who you like or sleep with. You don’t mind gender and stuff. You know?”

Charlie gives it a moment, then shakes his head. “Oh, then no, I’m not pan.”

Mateusz groans inwardly, did he really managed to find himself having a crush on the only boy in all of England who comes from such a free-thinking and accepting family, and is straight? He decides not to address it anymore, and looks at his friend, and just reaches out to him to have a look at Charlie’s sketchbook. He gets a radiant smile in return, and Charlie moves their mugs out of the way as he slides the black book towards his friend.

“I will be back shortly,” Charlie says, as he stands up and heads towards the loo. 

Mateusz hasn’t really seen any of Charlie’s new drawings since he got him this book, so he slowly flips through the pages filled with people on the train, and trees, and sometimes the fantasy creatures and landscapes that Charlies says he often dreams about. The one constant on every page are smaller and bigger drawings of him - some more detailed than the others, but they are everywhere. Mateusz feels his cheeks warm up, because - he can’t believe Charlie would draw him so often. Either he has a weird face, or Charlie enjoys looking at him enough to treat him as a frequent study subject. Maybe it’s both, combined. 

“I’m still getting a hang of it, but you are by far my best subject,” Charlie says, easily, as he slides back into the chair. 

Mateusz is amazed at the casualty he says this- somehow, he feels if he was the one who drew Charlie on every page of his school books, he would feel a bit embarrassed being caught at it. But then, Charlie gave the book to him out of his own free will, and he didn’t seem nervous at all.   
“I was taught how to draw when I was young, but my family didn’t want me to focus on such frivolity, however forming that wouldn’t be. I had more pressing tasks to do and learn about. But I always continued to draw. I had that one friend I used to draw a lot, same as you.”

Mateusz curses English language at this moment, and its gender neutral grammar forms. Male or female friend, he wants to ask, but he was already so pushy and open about his sexuality, he doesn’t want to focus on it anymore. It doesn’t matter.

Until it does, because few days later Charlie catches him as he’s leaving school, his hand clutched almost nervously on the handle of his bag.

“April asked me out for the dance!” he says, walking evenly besides Mateusz.

Mateusz puts a pleasant smile on his face, as his heart suddenly stops growing.   
“That is nice,” he replies calmly, feeling anything but. 

“I wasn’t sure what that meant, what sort of dance, what it was for, but from what I understand now, it is for people who may want to date, so, I feel it’s unnecessary to ask, but just to be proper and formal, would you like to accompany me to that dance?”

Mateusz stops in his tracks and looks at Charlie with eyes wide open. “And to be clear- not as a chaperone?”

Charlie knits his eyebrows. “A chaperone? No. We are almost of age. Who needs a chaperone now?” 

“And you’re not going with April. You ask me,” Mateusz sums up, just to say that to himself again, to make it more real.

“Of course, who else would I choose?” Charlie responds, incredulously. “I was of an opinion that we were already in the process of dating, as April says.”

Mateusz blinks. “From my experience, usually you tell the person when you are dating them. Otherwise it’s just being friends.”

Charlie ponders that for a while. “I see. My apologies, I didn’t know that would confuse you. Of course, we don’t have to do that. I understand if you would like to just meet as friends, and I was perhaps too forward, assuming everything. Are you going to the dance with someone else, then? It is fine if you are,” he says, and even Mateusz can see that Charlie clearly doesn’t mean that, and that he wouldn’t be too happy with this turn of the events. 

“Can I kiss you?” Mateusz asks, instead of responding, feeling his whole body shiver in anticipation.

“Should I take it as a yes to the dating, and the dance?” Charlie beams at him, but they just stand, looking at each other. “I meant- yes, you may. Regardless of your answer to the dance. Yes to the kiss, absolutely.”

So Mateusz leans down, and feels Charlie’s hand slip onto his neck. They lock eyes before Mateusz closes his, and finally kisses Charlie.   
Suddenly, he isn’t on a street, and he doesn’t care about anyone who could think this view disgusting or perverse, and he doesn't care about anyone who could be watching. He doesn't think about possibly explaining to his parents that Charlie will be his date to the dance. Nothing matters, apart from a weak, autumn English sun on his skin, and a boy he adores pliant under him, one of his talented hands slipping under Mateusz's jacket. All that matters is the closeness, and brief contact of their lips, and Charlie’s fingers slipping into his hair and tugging at it, lightly. 

Mateusz pulls away, breathless, and looks at Charlie’s slight smile, traces finger over his plump lips, over his pink dusted cheek. The boy seems to be shimmering in the afternoon sun, and Mateusz had never witnessed anything more beautiful.

He ponders, how will he ever survive Charlie Smith.


End file.
